It all began in 1977, when a businessman Roy Raymond (1946 – August 26, 1993), a graduate of Tufts University and The Stanford Graduate School of Business, opened a small lingerie shop called “Victoria’s Secret” in Stanford Shopping Center with an $80,000 capital (a $40,000 bank loan and $40,000 borrowed from relatives).  During its first year in business, the company earned $500,000 and within five years Victoria’s Secret had five stores, a popular catalogue, and a gross income of $6,000,000 per year.

Victoria’s Secret Logo from 1978 (above)

The idea and inspiration to open a lingerie store came as a result of Roy Raymond feeling embarassed when he was trying to purchase lingerie  (a negligee) for his wife in public and awkward enviroment of a department store. Like most men, he did not know anything about ladies’ underwear, and the store’s sales staff, uncertain about a man in the women’s underwear department, were wary about answering Raymond’s awkward questions. An MBA graduate from Stanford, Raymond thought that there would be a market for a shop where male customers wanting something sexy, skimpy, or silky did not have to be embarrassed.

Cover of the First Victoria’s Secret Catalog 1978 (above)

This is truly an interesting detail to know, because a little more than 30 years later, most men I know unanimously agree on one thing – that pink walls of Victoria’s Secret store make them feel dizzy and that they don’t really enjoy being there.  So, although Victoria’s Secret did become a very successfull business enterprise, Roy Raymond’s hopes for making it a comfortable place for men to shop did not come true.  And maybe this is one of the reasons for Victoria’s Secret subsequent success, that Leslie H. Wexner’s, another great businessman, who bought the chain from Roy Raymond, decided to abandon Raymond’s vision of a haven for male buyers. Contrary to Raymond, Wexner believed that although men do give sexy nightgowns occasionally as gifts, women buy more than 90 percent of intimate apparel, and this is why women, not men, should become the sole focus of the chain’s marketing.

Victoria’s Secret Advertisement, 1980 (above)

In 1982, Victoria’s Secret five stores and a 42-page mail-order catalogue were making a profit of $6 million a year when Mr. Raymond sold them for about $4 million to Leslie H. Wexner, the man who would mastermind the chain’s real growth. Wexner had already built a retailing empire in the Limited Apparel Group, the women’s-apparel chain he’d started in 1963. He thought Victoria’s Secret could be just as big. Raymond later opened a children’s clothing shop which went bankrupt in less than two years, leaving him near destitute. Despondent over the failure of both the business and his marriage, he walked halfway across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and jumped to his death on 26 August 1993. His body was pulled out of the bay a week later.